C Notes

C.1 Credit

These pages based on a template published by the awesome psyTeachR team. Extra thanks to Lisa DeBruine for help.

C.2 Colophon

Find the repo here: https://github.com/tomstafford/psy6422/

Everything worked better when I:

  • set GitHub pages to run off of Master/docs
  • listened to Lisa and used bookdown at the CL, not knit in Rstudio, to render the pages: R -e 'bookdown::render_book("index.Rmd")'
  • installed R 3.6
  • installed tidyverse, bookdown, devtools and finally Webex.

C.3 Data Science @ Sheffield

The MSc in Psychological Research Methods with Data Science, of which this module is a core part, is designed to teach graduate psychologists data science skills. If you don’t have a psychology background our other MSc courses in cognitive neuroscience can operate as “conversion courses,” since they are designed to teach core psychology/neuroscience skills to people from non-psychology backgrounds.

Our MSc is not the only way you can study data science at the University of Sheffield. The MSc in Data Analytics is taught in the Department of Computer Science and has a stronger focus on computational tools such as machine learning. The MSc in Data Science is in the Information School which is in the Faculty of Social Science, and has more of a focus on business decisions and using data in organisations. We also highly recommend the MSc in Social Research, run by the Sheffield Methods Institute, which teaches a full suite of quantative and qualatative research skills. The SMI is also home to the Data Analytics and Society Centre for Doctoral Training which offers opportunities to undertake a 4-year funded integrated MSc and PhD.

C.4 Careers

Inside or outside of research, data management and visualisation skills will be good for your career. Unlike many high-technical skills, coding is highly accessible. Even in the world of software development, over half of programmers are self-taught. But coding is relevant to more than just pure software jobs, one report found that 20% of graduate-level jobs value coding as a skill, and these jobs paid on average 30% more than other graduate jobs.

More information:

C.5 Testimonials

Peter Carr

This is the first year the MSc in Psychological Research Methods with Data Science has run, so more soon!